Criss Cross

The film opens with an aerial nighttime view of a metropolis, but the camera soon draws its circle around three figures acting out an obsessive “criss cross” of love and betrayal: Burt Lancaster, a would-be petty crook; Dan Duryea, as always, hiding cruelty behind his baby face; and Yvonne De Carlo, wed, in her way, to both. In the first moments of dialogue (“Meet me at the house at Palos Verdes”), the setting is revealed to be Los Angeles. Criss Cross is taut, exciting, extremely well-written, and one of the best of the sleazy underworld films of the 1940s, the closest Robert Siodmak came to capturing the essence of Fritz Lang.